Jerry Hayes

Amber Rudd a star is born. Winkles out!

10 Jun 2016 at 11:14

Well, well what an overnight star Amber Rudd has become. To be perfectly honest she has never really crossed my radar before. I vaguely knew that she was in the cabinet and something to do with energy, which goes to show that headline hogging ministers are rarely the most effective. I bumped into Patrick McLoughland a few weeks ago and remarked that I hadn’t seen him in the papers for ages.‘Excellent!’ He grinned. It is the right attitude. By and large ministers only appear when they are launching a radical new policy and then cowering before the cameras a few months later when it has begun to unravel. But her sparkling performance last night was impressive. To be fair so was Sturgeon and Eagle. They cleverly positioned themselves as putting the positive case for the EU whilst remaining true to their political interests. Eagle, bright eyed and lethal, is the true front runner to be Labour leader when the time comes for them to be put out of his misery. But that won’t be until 2020.

Poor Bozo, wearing a Sir Patrick Moore cast off and styled by David Blunkett looked very uncomfortable as wave after wave of heavy shelling came from the smoking barrels of the three horsewomen of the apocalypse. He was well and truly monstered. Once he was running for office now he is running for cover. His only protection was from Leadsom and Stewart who were as flat as trainer bras. Rudd, Eagle and Sturgeon tore into his overweening ambition to choose the curtains for Number 10, his whopper of a £350m lie on his Blunderbus, his wanting to charge patients to see their GPs and his desire to make a bonfire of workers rights. The most effective line in the evening came from Rudd, ’ the life and soul of the party but not the sort of person to drive you home afterwards’. This will stick. It will the the albatross round his neck.

What has mystified me is why the Brexiteers have made a strategic decision bang on about how we can use the £350m, when they know it is a lie and they know that we know it is too. But then Leave is run by that smug little creep Mathew Elliot and his evil twin, the professional sociopath Dominic Cummings, whose behaviour was described by the Treasury Committee as ‘appalling’.

The next line of attack from Remain should be that Brexit want to make Britain a land fit for Philip Green, Mike Ashley and Dominic Chappell to run our companies and protect workers rights. A chilling thought.

But conspiracy theories in the Leave camp are running wild. ITV fixed the questions. The BBC is biased. Number 10 sabotaged the registration system so they have a day’s advantage. It gives paranoia something to be scared about. Interesting that Cameron said that he wouldn’t sack Bozo, rather than that he would promote him. Leave are now saying that Number 10 is plotting against him. Of course they are. You don’t accuse the PM of being dishonest and expect to be given a bunch of roses.

Rudd is the member for Hastings. One of her predecessors, Jackie Lait had her effigy burnt next to the winkle sheds because of her support for the common fisheries policy. And there is a tradition that members of the winkle club to display golden winkle badges. The obligatory greeting is the cry of ‘winkles out’. I suppose we should be grateful that Bozo didn’t try that one.